Rollins's Review, January 20
Starting this week, I’ll be dividing Rollins’s Review into two sections.
Neo-Gonzo Highlights will be for posts I think exemplify the Neo-Gonzo style—tonically masculine, experiential, and excellent. Neo-Gonzo writing can be journalism, philosophy, or fiction.
The Best of the Rest will be for the best stylistically conventional posts.
Neo-Gonzo Highlights
I could not improve on
’s Neo-Gonzo masterpiece if I tried. It makes you want to eat meat, shoot guns, and make love to Lois Lane.Read it, read it, read it.
I read master satirist
's conceptualization of "Neanderthal Pride" as a good take on ASD/Asperger’s, which often feels like being a very slightly different species than most people (Wolves and dogs is the metaphor I like). Regardless of whether I'm right or wrong, it's both shocking and very funny. with the ethics of Tonic Masculinity. As he points out, if you don't understand pathocracy, in which a society is corrupted due to psychopaths taking over, you're going to end up with toxic masculinity. My theory is that in a world where masculinity is toxic as a rule, everyone has a goatee, like that episode of Star Trek. (Harrison was kind enough to include a sterling picture of Sean Connery as James Bond, which brightened my day up considerably upon viewing.) concludes his series on linguistics and ChatGPT. This series has been a sleeper; it's incredibly insightful, and one of the best examples of linguistics applied to solving a social problem I've ever seen. Highly technical, highly readable, highly recommended.
The Best of the Rest
This post by
blew my doors off. It is so, so, so good; lyrical, levelheaded, and hopeful.Trans stuff isn’t exactly my wheelhouse, but method is, and so is keeping people out of the clutches of those who would medicalize them for life. This is one parent’s success story, in which she lays out her method for deprogramming her kid from what amounts to a cult of addiction.
I disagree with
about Neil Gaiman's American Gods, but I’m with him on his larger point; reading should be fun, and you should read what you enjoy. I think pulp novels are awesome, and I think genre fiction is the best thing to come out of twentieth century literature.On a deeper level, I think the
project is worth supporting, and I'm pleased to boost it. Reading fiction is good for you.
Thanks for the rec, man. Actually, thanks for *all* the recommendations here. I can't wait to read the "Barbarian" piece (and the author is new to me).
It's an honor to be classed among the Neo-Gonzos - all the fun, fewer drugs. Thompson was my man back in my teens.